cover image Great Smoky Mountains

Great Smoky Mountains

Connie Toops. Voyageur Press (MN), $16.95 (127pp) ISBN 978-0-89658-162-3

With 100 magnificent color photographs and a sparkling narrative, Toops ( National Seashore ) leads a rewarding journey through time and space in the Great Smokies. Explaining the land's geologic origins in lay terms, she notes its remarkable biological diversity (more than 1500 species of plants, 236 of birds, 71 of mammals). Here are lush valleys, high peaks, rock outcrops, waterfalls, balds (meadows) and creeks (300 of them). Toops relates the human history of the region, from its first settlement to logging to relocation when it became a national park, and discusses current forest problems--insect damage, acid rain and other kinds of pollution. The park, she points out, is the only place in the eastern U.S. where wildlife interact as they did before human settlement. (May)